Below is an annotated list of children's literature for the elementary classroom. The books are organized by the Six Elements of Social Justice Curriculum Design (Picower, 2007). It is based on work by pre-service teachers at Montclair State University. They have read and reviewed these books and provided insights into how they can be used in K-5 settings.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

This is a great book with really simple ideas for kids to be eco friendly. They have ideas to reduce, reuse and, recycle. They have ways to reuse pens that have ink but wont write, how to increase margins on the computer so you won’t waste paper, lists of website and magazines on being eco friendly, and many more ways that are simple but show that kids can make a difference too by just doing simple tasks that will help save our environment.

Element 6:

Element 6 is on making change and although it might seem hard to make change at such a young age it doesn’t have to be. This book shows many ways that even a child under 12 can help make the changes in our environment. When children start making change at a young age it will carry on with them into their adulthood.

Follow up activity:

There are two activities in this book that although were separate in the book I thought they would work together very nicely. One activity in the book is reusing broken crayons and making multi colored crayon circles with them. So and activity in the classroom we could do would be to reuse the crayons they either have at home or in the classroom. We start off by collecting old broken crayons (that are normally hard to color with anyways) and take off all the wrapping on it, if any. Then you get muffin tins and place all the scrap crayons in the holes. Each child could have their own hole to fill up. Then the other activity is making a solar oven by using 2 pizza boxes, a pencil, scissors, aluminum foil, newspaper, nontoxic black paint, nontoxic glue cooking pan plastic wrap, tape, and a paintbrush. Ok the materials might seem like a lot but if each child could bring one item from home it would work out real nicely. They have the directions on how to assemble it and when its sunny out it will work just like a real oven. This way we can melt our crayons from the first activity and make reused crayons.